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What a week. I was at the College of Preachers Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Then Wednesday night I flew to Atlanta. Thursday, Friday, and Saturday I was at the Music that Makes Community Conference with my Minister of Music. It was an exhilarating, but exhausting. I flew back this evening and have church in the morning. Sunday afternoon and Monday I expect to be nearly useless.

Did I learn much? Of course! Spending three days working of preaching was very worthwhile. Really it was a "Master Class" in preaching. It was also neat to reconnect with Lillian Daniel, whom I met at Yale when I was there. She would come in and give guest lectures on preaching. The topic for the three days was the use of personal narrative in preaching. Of course, I already do a fair amount of this, but it was still worth working on with the group.

It Atlanta we studied "Paperless Music"--which is the recovery and use of methods to get congregations and groups singing without relying on the congregation having music-in-hand. In other words, using techniques like call-and-response, echo (lining hymns), and so forth. There are many advantages to using this kind of music in worship, which you'll hear about later!

So it was three days of working on how to lead (and compose) this kind of music. It was a lot of fun. Great to catch up with some friends from All Saint's Company like Donald, Rick, Marilyn, Emily, and Scott. I knew Emily at Yale, so that's other Yale Divinity School connection this week. We sang and sang and sang. Worthwhile, and I have more to say about it later.

Right now, time to go to bed!

-t